


Soul to Waste

by Magpiie



Series: MadWife - Halloween Specials [1]
Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Demons, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 10:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20722622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpiie/pseuds/Magpiie
Summary: Laura McCabe is an ambitious witch who's seeking more than tarot cards and tea leaves. Summoning demons is more her flavour.Part of a trio of MadWife oneshots for Halloween.





	Soul to Waste

**Author's Note:**

> "Please allow me to introduce myself  
I'm a man of wealth and taste  
I've been around for a long, long year  
Stole many a man's soul to waste" - Sympathy For The Devil, by The Rolling Stones

Laura McCabe hadn’t been born with a single drop of supernatural, paranormal or otherwise extraordinary blood in her body. Nobody in her family had ever been aware of much outside of their own mundane existence, had never known a thing about it when they’d passed a werewolf in the street or sat next to a vampire on the bus.  
  
When most girls from conventional, conservative upbringings leave home for the big city, they experiment with drugs and sex. Laura McCabe experimented with witchcraft. She had inserted herself into a small collection of witches who met at an abandoned warehouse downtown, bluffing based on what she gleaned from rumours and patchy research. Most mundane folk can pick up some magic with enough dedication, and Laura’s thirst for knowledge was insatiable. Quickly she found herself surpassing her coven-mates and they, increasingly unnerved by her single-minded determination, weren’t too upset when she started to drift away from them. Her mind was on more ambitious goals than the rest of them cared to consider. After a lifetime of overlooked talents and condescending remarks, of spiked drinks and walks home with her keys between her fingers, she craved power.  
  
The first night she summoned the demon Mad Sweeney was a dreary night in September, and rain was pouring in sheets down the window of her small room. She laid her hands flat on the floorboards next to the edge of the circle she’d drawn neatly in chalk, divided by the lines of a pentagram and marked with runes she’d copied carefully from a book. Her mouth was dry and she could feel her heartbeat in her chest, but she’d never let fear get in the way of a stupid idea before.  
  
The moment the last whispered syllable of the incantation dropped from her lips, the shadows within the circle seemed to intensify and twist. There was a noise, gradually rising in volume and pitch, like the powerful hum of some huge engine - and then there was the pressure. An alarming tension growing in the air, rising the hairs on her arms, crushing the breath out of her lungs, roaring that oppressive machine noise so hard in her ears that finally, reluctantly, she was forced to turn her face away.  
  
As soon as she broke sight with the circle, everything stopped; and when she turned frantically back with wide eyes there was something else in the room with her, a great hulking shadow at the dead centre of the circle, a monstrous silhouette with a head like a goat and uncountable yellow eyes blinking out of the darkness. And then, as if shedding a second skin, Sweeney strode into the light.  
  
He was only marginally shorter in this human shape, with glittering golden eyes and gnarled black horns that framed a strip of blood-red hair.  
"Hmm, a little witch?" he murmured, striding cockily across the circle towards her - and stopping abruptly at its edge. He glanced down at the binding atop the chalk lines, a neat rim of salt and St. John’s Wart, and she smiled tightly and tilted her head to one side.  
"I’m not just some high school kid with a ouija board," she told him, a glow of self-satisfaction (and, in no small part, relief) bloomed in her chest when he sneered and turned around. She had set a bottle of whiskey in the centre of the circle, and now he swept it up and took a deep drink, then asked over his shoulder,  
"What d’you want?"  
"Just to learn," she said cooly, only sweeping her curious gaze over him now that his back was turned. Precisely carved scars formed lines along each shoulder and down to each elbow, where his skin faded to a solid black and his human wrists led to huge clawed hands. His legs would look similar, she guessed, though he wore a pair of faded black trousers - in place of a human’s ankles and feet were heavy black paws, lightly furred, like a lion's. "You’re ancient, and powerful. Or at least, that’s what I read. I’d like a little knowledge. In exchange for offerings, of course." He lifted the bottle to his face to squint at the label, took his time taking another drink, and she waited patiently for him to deign to reply.  
  
"…Alright. One bottle, one question."  
"What do the runes on your back mean?" The question took him by surprise and he craned his neck to peer over his shoulder as if he had forgotten they were even there. "I recognise most of them, but I’m not sure what they’re supposed to mean together."  
"Hm. Demon bindings. It shows where our power lies. Not a lot demons have this many." He smirked and raised his chin just a little and she resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.  
"So it’s like a rank?"  
"More like a name."  
"Sweeney?"  
"A different name," he muttered, growing disinterested. His eyes raked over her, a small but defiant woman in a pretty floral dress and heavy black boots, then met her gaze. "What’s your name?" Laura stared back at him in silence, not sure how to respond - your name, and your secrets, were powerful. Sweeney raised his eyebrows questioningly, and a sudden sickening feeling of disorientation hit her between the eyes. "Laura," he answered for her.  
"How did you do that?" she asked breathlessly, cursing him for breaking her cool demeanour.  
"Ah, now, that’s not the deal. One bottle, one question." As he held his current offering up to her the lights began to flicker, and then in an instant he was just gone.  
  
She waited a week before conjuring him again, and following that they fell into a weekly routine. As time went on he would stay longer, ask more about her, request other offerings - some she agreed to source for him, others she flatly refused before changing the subject. In the meantime, Laura had picked up a job at a local bar to support her occult explorations. There was one evening in early December, when snow was just starting to puff through the air to melt on the ground, that she found herself still helping to close up almost an hour after she was usually home. Laura was starting to get antsy. It was a _school_ night. Her boss must have caught her sneaking glances at the clock, because she turned with a smirk and asked if there was someone she was excited to get home to. Laura laughed distantly.  
"Hmm, something like that." Not that she would have called it excitement exactly - this was like an appointment, and it was rude to cancel. But it was easier to pretend she was hooking up with someone than to admit that she was learning magic from a demon.  
"Oh, alright - go home and get some. I’m nearly done."  
  
"You’re late" were his first words to her that night, and she sighed.  
"Yeah, sorry, I had some stuff to-"  
"I want a new offering," he interrupted, staring around her little room as if he’d never been in it before. It was modestly furnished and littered with books, from hefty mystical tomes to pulp novels with brightly illustrated covers. Her shoulders slumped with annoyance, and she shrugged.  
"Fine, what is it this time?" His eyes drifted to her, and he fixed her with a cool stare that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.  
"You, mo mhuirnín," he purred, a smile quirking one corner of his mouth. She took a deep breath and sighed heavily, expression unamused.  
"Shut the fuck up." He choked out a laugh and strode to the very edge of the circle to smile crookedly down at her.  
"That isn’t very nice. Aren’t I doing you a favour?"  
"A favour that I pretty much pay you for? That sounds more like a job to me."  
"I get it," he muttered, smiling and glancing away. "You’re scared."  
  
The briefest flash of annoyance crossed her face before she was able to mask it again, but he didn’t need to see it - he could read mortals like open books, could sense their every emotion before they even realised they were feeling them. He heard her boot scrape the floorboards and glanced down to see a break in the salt circle. And a moment later, she reached up to grab one horn.  
  
A surge of power from her hand made him hiss out a curse, as a burning sensation flared at the base of his captured horn so strong that he lost his vision for a moment or two: just long enough for her to pull his mouth down to meet hers. His teeth were sharp against her lips and his claws were sharp where they gripped her hips, pushing her backwards until she hit the short dresser behind her. Boxes and bottles clattered to the ground as he lifted her on top of it. She wrapped her slim legs around his hips to pull him flush against her, booted feet barely touching behind his broad back, and he chuckled darkly against her mouth.  
  
"This all part of the job?" he grinned, bucking his hips into her, and she closed her eyes and hummed softly.  
"Do you show up to this little room every week just for whiskey and cigars?" she asked in response, hands trailing to the waistband of his trousers, and a soft growl rumbled in his chest as she smoothly unfastened the button and began to push the clothing down past his hips. Just as she slid her hand down to wrap around his cock, pulling it free, his huge hands found the fabric of her dress and tore it apart as if it were nothing more than spider silk. Laura threw her head back as his mouth found her bare breast, and the needy actions of his tongue and teeth and lips on her nipple drew high-pitched gasps and moans from her throat. His hips rolled with her movements, and she tightened her legs around him so that her hand ground against her clit with every stroke of his hot shaft. Her other hand was at the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in his hair as he sucked and kissed over the skin of her chest hard enough to bruise. When her moans grew shorter and more breathless and her hips began to buck roughly against his, he lifted her up, carried her across the room, and dropped her carelessly on the small single bed.  
  
She barely had time to push her little white panties down to her knees and kick them off before he descended on her, lips and tongue on her slit, arm wrapping around one thigh to press his thumb to her clit. Her ruined dress still hung from her shoulders, and she pushed the fabric aside to pinch one nipple between her fingers, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes and panting out dazed little pleas. His mouth worked hard, his beard tickling the inside of her thighs, and before long she was almost back at the brink of orgasm, breaths growing short and legs tightening. He moved to pull away but she was faster, hand finding the back of his neck and pulling him against her with little static-electricity crackles of pain. She was rewarded with a warning snarl and two thick fingers inside her. When he moved to suck at her clit he glowered up at her, pupils blown so wide his eyes were almost entirely black, and pumped his fingers hard. Her panting turned to breathless cries and she tightened her grip on the back of his neck, fingernails digging into skin, hips jerking with a rapidly increasing desperation until she came so hard it knocked the breath out of her.  
  
Immediately he crawled up her body, spread her thighs wide and kissed her violently, tongue sliding between her lips as the head of his erection pressed inside her. Pain flared between her legs as he entered her and she cried out wordlessly, hands grabbing onto his shoulders. He felt a prickle of energy on his skin and stilled, letting out an unsteady, impatient breath. Beneath her fingers his muscles were tight, and she could taste her own pleasure on his mouth, and the heady mix of arousal and pain was making her lightheaded.  
  
He slowly trailed soft kisses from her lips to her jaw, and murmured in her ear as he began to move again in slow, shallow thrusts.  
"Come on, little witch," he said, voice low and thick, breath heavy. "You want this, don’t you?" His hand traced the curve of her hip, slid around to palm her ass in his large hand, claws almost drawing blood. When she opened her mouth to answer, she could only groan softly. His hand moved to her clit. "Good little girls like you don’t go summoning demons just to learn dusty old secrets. Hm?" She choked out,  
"Please."  
"That’s right," he chuckled, working himself deeper inside her, rolling her clit in lazy circles. "You’re so good." His voice had slowed to a drawl. "You can take it. You want it so badly." Tears were forming at the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision, and her arms trembled around him with the punishing overstimulation. Finally he bottomed out, burying himself inside her with a satisfied grunt, then returned his lips to hers and continued thrusting.  
  
It started out tightly restrained. It was only when Laura laid her head back in the messy pile of pillows and fixed him with a dark stare that he began gradually picking up in speed, thrusting harder, panting harshly. She wrapped her cool hands around his hot one, still working softly between them, and pulled it up to suck his finger into her mouth. A startled groan broke through his frantic breaths and he grinned crookedly, watching her eyes flutter closed as she sucked at him, rolling her hips, losing herself in the sinful pleasures. Dark purple marks were starting to bloom on her pale skin, just as he’d expected - beautiful marks across her chest, up her neck. A delicious corruption. The same soft shapes would be forming on her inner thighs too, where his hips slammed against her with each increasingly harsh thrust. Her grip grew tight around his wrist and he could feel her hips starting to jerk, her tight walls convulsing around him, her muscles growing weak as another orgasm shuddered through her. His hands found her hips and he pulled her roughly to him, sliding deeper, and soon he was coming too, groaning thickly as he finished inside her, body spasming with exhaustion.  
  
For a while they were still in the darkness, listening to each other’s ragged breathing. Her body twitched, entirely spent. It occurred to her dimly that she’d never taken off her boots. Eventually he stood, ran a hand through his hair, gently pressed his fingers against the welts raised on the back of his neck from her powerful touch.  
"You know, you really are quite something," he told her, leaning to pick up the bottle of whiskey she’d left him in the centre of the circle this time. He took a leisurely drink. She swallowed.  
"I’m aware of that," she replied, voice firm but raspy. He chuckled softly.  
"I look forward to next week’s offering. I hope you’ll be creative."


End file.
